Category: Recipes

Cheesecake Tarts

I won’t be including a pastry recipe with this just yet, but if you need the tart cases you can find them at your local supermarket usually in packs of 6-12 in the bread section.

Just a last note: After this recipe, all my recipes will be by weight for two reasons:

1) We do it in my course and it’s becoming a good habit ;)
2) Even though you can buy measuring cups from the supermarket or your local cooking supply store, they are not always quite accurate. A weight measurement instead of a cup measurement across the recipes will ensure that every recipe is exactly the same every single time you make it. Think about it, sometimes you get large eggs and sometimes they’re small – that can make all the difference!

Cheesecake Tarts (fills roughly 12-18)

  • 225g Cream Cheese
  • 2/3 cup caster sugar
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten (room temperature)
  • 1 tsp. vanilla essence
  • Fresh/canned fruit of your choice (optional!)
  1. Preheat your oven to 180C.
  2. In your mixer, beat the cream cheese with the sugar. Most cream cheese will not need any softening but if you have a brand that is particularly hard, leave it to soften slightly or pop it in the microwave for a few seconds.
  3. Slowly add the eggs and vanilla, beat until combined.
  4. Arrange your tart cases on a tray and fill 3/4 of each one with the mixture. Bake for 15 minutes and leave to cool.
  5. When completely cooled, arrange your fruit on the top. Or eat them, if you don’t want fruit!

While it’s not this recipe, for some inspiration here’s a photo from my first Pastries class today where we made fruit tarts and a flan. I hope the fruit arrangement gives you some ideas!

No Comments by Monnie on September 3, 2010
filed in Desserts

August Brownies

On the search for the never-fail and always awesome brownie recipe (I know I have documented this twice already) I’m back with a third shot. This recipe is originally from a post on Inside Cuisine, where Rebecca was lucky enough to scribble this one down from Soren Lascelles (the 2010 Australian Appetite for Excellence, Young Chef of the Year).

brownies

I made some slight adjustments to the recipe and if you follow the link above you’ll see he had macadamias – I’m not the biggest fan of nuts in brownies (also because of allergy concerns with some people) but chuck a handful or two in at the end and mix them through if desired.

Recipe: Chocolate Brownies (no nuts)

Ingredients:

  • 250g Dark Chocolate
  • 250g Unsalted Butter
  • 205g Caster Sugar
  • 175g Eggs (3 or 4 eggs depending on egg size. Advisable to measure)
  • 110g Plain Flour

Method:

  1. Get all your ingredients ready first. Your eggs should be as close as possible to room temperature – if you use them straight out of the fridge, it will react with the warm chocolate mixture.
  2. Preheat oven to 160C and grease and line a square tray. Roughly 25-30cm square is ideal.
  3. Measure out the chocolate and butter into a saucepan and set aside.
  4. Whisk together the eggs and sugar in a seperate bowl, and sift out the flour in a third bowl.
  5. Melt the chocolate and butter on a low heat and allow to cool slightly.
  6. Pour a little amount of the chocolate mixture into the eggs and sugar and mix to combine. This will temper the mixture if the chocolate is still a bit warm. We don’t want to cook the eggs! Add the rest and whisk.
  7. Add the sifted flour in stages and whisk until combined.
  8. Pour into prepared pan and place straight into the oven. Here I sprinkled a handful of chocolate chips along the top for effect.
  9. After about 25 minutes, have a look to see if the top is still ultra spongy – if it is, leave it another 5 minutes
  10. You can test to see if it’s done with a skewer, but we still want some crumbs to cling to it, dry brownies are no fun!
  11. Remove tray from oven and remove brownie slice from the tray onto a cooling tray. Let it cool completely before slicing!
  12. Dust the top with icing sugar and trim all four sides, then cut into equal rectangles. Enjoy with a hot drink :)

You should have a very evil, chocolate and delicious brownie, that’s not too chocolatey, not too dry or moist, and melts away in your mouth. :)

3 Comments by Monnie on August 22, 2010
filed in Brownies

The Macaron/Macaroon Saga (Part One)

If you’re reading this in Australia, Masterchef is everywhere. “Did you watch Masterchef last night? So-and-so totally botched the pressure test.” What? What is this language?

To honour my non-watching of this season, I decided to finally give the delicate little thing a go. Firstly I’ll clarify a couple of things:

1) To settle all the debate and the questions, these biscuits themselves are actually macarons. Macaroon with a double o is a word used to apply to a variety of small cakes of meringue-like cookies. So technically it could probably apply as both, however if you are making the recipe with almond meal and egg whites like I am about to tell you below, they’re macarons. I’m not going to get all up in arms about it, I call it one or the other depending on how many letters I feel like pressing at the time. ;)

This recipe is derived from the one that Callum used on Masterchef, and the original “Violet Macaroons with Raspberries and Buttercream” recipe is available on the Masterchef website.

Basic Plain Vanilla Macarons
(makes roughly 24 halves)

Ingredients

  • 225g pure icing sugar (very important – if it has any other ingredients in it it’s not icing sugar it’s icing mixture, no matter what the front says)
  • 130g almond meal
  • 3 egg whites
  • 60g caster sugar
  • essence of your choice, to taste
  • a few drops of food colour of your choice

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 120C. It’s very important it stays at this temperature almost exactly, so be ready as always with your oven thermometers.
  2. Sift almond meal and icing sugar into one bowl. Sift it again into another bowl, then back into the original bowl – so it should be sifted three times. Set aside.
  3. With an electric mixer, beat the egg whites until doubled in size. Slowly add the caster sugar while mixing, and mix until it forms firm peaks. The way to tell is to lift the beaters out and if the peaks don’t drop back in, you are pretty much there. Another way is to slowly lift the bowl upside down (haha) and if the whites don’t move they’re also ready.
  4. Add your essence to taste, then carefully add the food colouring. I chose only to add a little vanilla essence for this run, so my macarons are completely white.
  5. Fold your sifted almond meal mixture into the egg white meringue, and keep folding gently until all combined and it starts to look smoother. The consistency should be not too runny, but not a dough either – it’s been described as a “magma”.
  6. Place the mixture in a piping bag with a round tip and pipe 4 – 5cm diameter circles onto a lined baking tray. To do this, hold the bag 90 degrees half a cm off the baking paper, and squeeze. When the circle is big enough, stop piping and pull the tip out of the piped circle.
  7. Leave them to rest for 15-20 minutes. If there are any little bits poking out of the top from when you piped them, you should be able to gently press them back down.
  8. Place them into the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove them from the oven and let them to cool.

To make the filling, it is a small amount of buttercream – 85g unsalted butter and 100g sifted pure icing sugar. You can colour this too to match your macarons. Add more icing sugar as always if the buttery taste is still too much, but you also don’t want this to be a very thick and stiff buttercream. The consistency should match the light and airy taste of the macarons.

Now here’s some things that no one tells you about macarons:
- They are extremely fragile biscuits. Looking at them you would think they are completely rock solid and a full biscuit, when indeed they are meant to be slightly crispy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside. If you press too hard when handling them or picking them up from the tray, they’ll crack. I have had several disaster ones but also several perfect ones.
- You will need to use all the mixture on the first run. If you let the mixture sit too long in the bowl without piping it to form the skin, they won’t “pop” off of the tray and they will look like this:

- Now that I’ve tried this for the first time, I get the feeling there might not have been enough egg whites from the eggs that I used. I may try a fourth egg white in my next run, to see if that will improve the smoothness when piping. As you can see from the first picture, while it is great it’s not the perfect consistency, and I think it needs a little more liquid substance of some sort for that to happen. If you give that a go, let me know if it’s any better!

As always please feel free to use the contact form to send me any questions or comments, or leave a comment on a post!

Aside from macarons, I am scheduled to start a six month course in Patisserie on the 19th of July, so this blog should be a lot more active with lots of baking tips and tricks from the girl in Patisserie school!

x Monnie

1 Comment by Monnie on July 12, 2010
filed in Recipes

Mad Hatter

My giant cupcakes are starting to become popular! This is my fourth now, and my second “ordered” one. I got an email earlier in the week asking for one completely chocolate (case, cake and icing), and the theme was a Mad Hatter tea, so I decided to make a hat for the top as well!

Mad Hatter Giant Cupcake (Closeup)

The hat is made from fondant! I went on a hunt to find some pre coloured green, but the places I went to were unfortunately out of stock. I decided I’d paint it instead, as it would end up holding the same amount of green colour as if I mixed it in (and made a horrible mess).

You can paint fondant by:

1) With powdered colour, mix a tiny bit with a tiny bit of vodka. The reason vodka is used as it isn’t sticky like water on it’s own, and the alcohol evaporates as it dries.

2) With Wilton gel colour, do the same, but you only need the tiniest bit of vodka. If you paint it too thickly, it will be sticky afterwards – I put too much on the top of the hat, but the sides and brim were fine – I didn’t put as much on them.

3) I would say that you shouldn’t paint it with water based colours, as I have read it actually starts to melt the fondant.. Fondant doesn’t really like water.

The ribbon around the hat is pre-coloured black fondant, and the price tag is just plain white with the numbers written on.

For a final touch I decided to cut out her name in white fondant letters and put them around the top as a contrast!

Onto the cupcake…

Mad Hatter Giant Cupcake

The chocolate case is just that – nothing special this time, just a large block of dark cooking chocolate melted in two stages. I’ve gotten really good at doing them now, managed to get it up high enough for the top of the cupcake to sit on it and not have any gaps around the sides!

As previously, the cake is the miracle chocolate cake recipe I have, and the icing is regular buttercream with dutch processed cocoa – it is not as sweet as regular cocoa, but gives a darker chocolate colour. The bottom and top layers of the cake are stuck together with some of the icing as well.

And there you have it :) I think they were really happy with this when I delivered it, and it looked like they were having a great time too!

No Comments by Monnie on April 11, 2010
filed in Cakes, Recipes

Giant Princess Cupcake

Giant Cupcake and Mini Vanilla Cupcakes

You may remember this from my previous post about the Ladies Night stall I appeared at in March! I had a lot of comments from people thinking the cupcake wasn’t real, so here’s the full explanation of how it came together.

The giant cupcake itself is a chocolate cake recipe (another recipe from my Step-Mum, see Jelly Slice for the first one!) called ‘Miracle Chocolate Cake’. It was the first thing out of my recipe book that I made, and it really lives up to its name too! It is a moist chocolatey cake with the best texture and it holds its shape which is perfect for the giant cupcake.

Except this time I had a problem; I got the cake out of the pan WAY too early and it fell apart.

Luckily I was able to fix everything as the top half had only split in one place so I could disguise it with icing, and the bottom would all fit into the chocolate casing anyway.

Oh yes, the casing.

The chocolate case is made by melting chocolate and spreading it on the inside of the bottom part of the giant cupcake tin in two or three layers. I used one bag of Wilton’s Candy Melts to do it. Melt approximately half and pour into the cupcake tin, spreading it halfway up the sides and across the bottom. Don’t worry if it’s too thin, the second part will take care of the rest!

Pop it in the fridge for an hour or so – it needs to have completely set before you can do the next part. Don’t rush this.

Once it’s set hard, Melt the remaining Candy Melts and make sure you get all up the sides so it’s thick enough to support the top of the giant cupcake. Pop it in the fridge for an hour or two, until it’s set again. Leave it for as long as possible. It’s not going to completely melt when it is out but if the cake isn’t going in it for a little while, leave it in the fridge until it is.

Giant Princess Cupcake and Vanilla Minis

Depending on how thick you make the casing, you may need to trim around the sides of the bottom half of your cupcake. Luckily, this was mainly a display unit and my bottom half had fallen apart after baking, so the cake bits filled up the bottom while the top sat on the edges of the chocolate case.

The icing is the easy part – I used a Wilton 1M tip and a giant piping bag to finish it, and it is still not as neat as I would have liked. I made it quite thick, as I substituted some of the butter in my buttercream for copha (vegetable shortening) instead. I needed the icing to set and not melt, and 100% butter can cause issues in warm temperatures. It wasn’t a *hot* day, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Of course, this was a display model too.

You can do that in regular recipes if you don’t think the frosting will hold out, substitute 1/4 or 1/3 of the butter in your buttercream for Copha and see the difference in the stability of your frosting!

This frosting is a regular buttercream recipe, it is almost white thanks to Wilton’s White White Icing Color.

The flowers are sugar flowers from the supermarket I have had since forever! I thought it was a good time to use them, so it looks like a fairy / princess giant cupcake.

And that’s it! This took a lot of work! If I wasn’t already baking 100 cupcakes the icing would look so much neater, but I am proud of my work anyway. I know the next one is going to be even more awesome!

We also figured out that there’s a huge problem with transporting these – I have 6 inch cake boxes but the lid doesn’t close (obviously) and depending on the icing thickness the sides can be damaged by the box! I’ll figure something out one day soon, but to get it to and from the Ladies Night this was in a large round ceramic dish with non slip material so it didn’t move in my car.

3 Comments by Monnie on April 8, 2010
filed in Cakes

Giant Cupcake Round Two (Oreo Paw Prints)

Paw Print Giant Cupcake

We have success! This went off in the end so perfectly, but I was stressing about not having enough time.. I always over stress, don’t I? I am baking for a promo event on Friday and I will also be appearing at a primary school Ladies Night with my first ever Cupcake Treats stall! But for now, onto the things you want to know…

Oh! I have added a contact page to this website, please send me all your questions if you have any and I will feature them so everyone can know the answer in a Q&A style. I get lots of comment questions and would love to share them!

The Giant Cupcake

Earlier in the week I ordered one of the silicon giant cupcake moulds that are on special and all over informercials. I have to say, I am pretty disappointed. Not only did I use the wrong mixture so my cake didn’t rise high enough (my fault) but when the skewer came out clean and I took it out and got it out to cool, a lot of the mixture had stuck to the sides and didn’t peel away neatly.

Sooo off to the Wilton tin and a different recipe and we have success. I baked the giant cupcake the night before as it is extremely hard to level out the top and bottom when it’s fresh without making a very very big crumbly mess!

I recommend for this that you have a large cake leveller – I know it is a lot of money, but it makes all the difference. You can use any regular cake recipe, or a double cupcake recipe, as one is not enough.

The Frosting

After a discussion with the customer on Friday, due to the weather and the day delay before the event, we decided to go with buttercream instead of whipped cream as the frosting base, and added a lot of crushed Oreo into the mix right at the end.

Paw Prints

If you want to cut anything out of Oreo’s like the picture you will need a metal cookie cutter (plastic might not be strong enough) that is small enough to get your shape. Put all the Oreos IN THE FRIDGE. Cutting them at room temperature will cause them all to fall apart and crack pretty much instantly.

When you’re ready to attempt to cut them out:

1) Place your cookie cutter over the Oreo and press down slightly to make an indent so it doesn’t slip
2) As it is probably uncomfortable to push down with your hands, get a large kitchen utensil (we used a potato masher) or something flat to put over the top and push down really hard.
3) Take the leftovers away and the Oreo should still be inside the cookie cutter. Press down around the edges gently to ease it out, and set it aside.

They are always going to be very fragile, so be careful not to crack either biscuit layer, and when you put them on the cupcake push them right into the buttercream so they don’t move.

Paw Print Oreo Stand

1 Comment by Monnie on March 22, 2010
filed in Cakes, Cupcakes

Vanilla Good Luck Cupcakes

I am going to do a big follow-up on my Giant Cupcakes this weekend as I am making one for an order, so I will hand down all the tips with my second official run next week!

Last week was a busy one for the business – I had one major corporate order and then a small donation order for a friend of my Mum’s who was leaving the child care centre where my siblings attend. We decided to make ‘Good Luck’ Cupcakes, with my new red fondant (beats hand colouring!) and some letter cutters.

Good Luck Cupcakes

These cupcakes are simply vanilla cake base with white rolled fondant and then red fondant star shapes and letters. A very simple but very cute way of getting a message across :)

I’d like to present an improved Vanilla recipe, which is based off of the very tasty Chocolate one, which is a very spongy moist cupcake.

Vanilla Cupcakes

  • 1 cup SR Flour
  • 1/3 cup Plain Flour
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
  • 110-120g butter (it depends on how moist you like them)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2  -  3/4 cup milk (depending on batter)
  • 2/3 cup caster sugar

Method:

  1. Line cupcake trays. Preheat oven to 170C (160 fan-forced). Beat softened butter, add sugar and vanilla essence.
  2. Add eggs one at a time, beating until just combined.
  3. Add half of the flour (sifted) with 1/4 cup of milk, and repeat for the remaining half. If the batter is too thick, add some more milk.
  4. Spoon into cases and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out just clean. Check at 15 minutes!

Giant Cupcake Recipes are coming soon! Enjoy :)

2 Comments by Monnie on March 17, 2010
filed in Cupcakes

Chocolate Brownies!

Last week on Catch of the Day they advertised a brownie tin. I’ve wanted to make great looking dark chocolate brownies for a little while, so I gave it a crack with one of the included recipes last Saturday night after I picked it up at the Post Office. It was a disaster.

The recipe that came with the tin wasn’t very explanatory and literally was a list of ingredients, and what order to add them in. There was no saviour tips and no “if you see this, this means this” instructions. It failed. Well, I thought it did. The recipe had too many eggs, and it just seemed undercooked. I gave up after an hour in the oven and threw it in the bin.

Brownies Take Two

Last weekend I tried again, with a recipe adapted from baking911. They’ve come out so brilliantly and exactly as I expected. I must admit I was extremely disappointed on Saturday when they failed, because it was the third new thing I’d made in as many weeks that didn’t work out like I wanted it to. These ones were much better and I took a lot of care with them. I also learnt that I won’t use the divider that came with the brownie tin for fudgey recipes as they are too sticky.

Without further ado…

Chocolate Fudge Brownies
(makes one 8×8 in pan)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup Plain Flour
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
  • 1 stick Unsalted Butter (approximately 113 grams. 90% of the recipes I use work in “sticks”. You get used to it)
  • 4 ounces chopped dark chocolate (again, approximately 113 grams! Haha)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 175C / 350F and thoroughly grease pan with baking spray. If you’re still worried, line it with baking paper for easy removal.
  2. Mix flour and baking powder in a medium bowl and set aside.
  3. Melt butter over medium heat in a small saucepan, stirring constantly. When just melted, take off of the heat and add in the chopped chocolate. Keep stirring until all melted and mixed through (will take a few minutes). Leave to the side to cool.
  4. In another bowl, lightly beat eggs and vanilla (with a hand whisk). Stir in sugar.
  5. Mix in the cooled butter/chocolate mixture.
  6. Fold in flour mixture. When almost combined, add the walnuts (optional).
  7. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out slightly moist. The tops of the brownies should sound hollow when tapped. They will harden as they cool, so don’t worry about under baking them.

They are very chewy – the walnuts really are optional, if you don’t like nuts don’t add them in at the end – they can be a tad overwhelming. Enjoy :)

2 Comments by Monnie on February 27, 2010
filed in Brownies, Recipes

Dairy-Free Vanilla

I’ve posted Dairy-Free Orange and Vanilla before, but completely forgot about it when I needed a dairy-free recipe. It’s fairly easy to substitute ingredients in for specific nutritional requirements, thanks to things like gluten-free flours and lactose/vegan margarines.

Dairy Free Vanilla

The photo above was from my first test run of dairy-free. I chose to use one of my existing vanilla cupcake recipes but simply replace the dairy ingredients with Nuttelex and Soy Milk. As yucky as soy milk may sound to some people (my Twitter feed reacted quite strongly to the thought of it!) you can’t taste it at all in this recipe.

Dairy-Free Vanilla Cupcakes (makes approx 18 regular / 30 mini)

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups Self-Raising Flour
  • 2/3 cup Caster Sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 115g Nuttelex (or any other vegan margarine)
  • 1/2 cup Soy Milk
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 175C (160C fan forced). As always, I recommend you use an oven thermometer. :)
  2. Beat the Nuttelex, sugar and vanilla essence together – you don’t need to pre-beat the Nuttelex as it’s already soft.
  3. Add in the eggs one at a time and mix until combined. It might look as if it’s seperated at first but will mix together.
  4. Sift the flour and add half in with half of the soy milk. Repeat with the remaining half.
  5. At this stage, if it seems too thick, add 1-2 tablespoons worth of soy milk, but don’t add too much!
  6. Spoon into cases and bake for 15 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.

“Buttercream” Frosting

Ingredients

  • 150g Nuttelex
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence
  • 3 – 4 cups Icing Sugar (sifted)
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons Soy Milk

Method

  1. Beat Nuttelex with Icing Sugar (and vanilla essence), adding it one sifted cup at a time.
  2. It should start to get fairly thick after the third cup – you might not need a fourth. Give it a taste test to see if the balance of sugar and Nuttelex is even. If you find it is too thick, add the soy milk in in very very small amounts (that’s why I’ve written maybe 1-2 tablespoons) until it is at the right consistency to pipe or spread on the cupcakes.

Remember, if it’s too thick and you use a plastic disposable piping bag, it’ll split the sides of the bag. I know this from experience ;) If you’re not sure how thick it should be, it should be thick enough to hold it’s shape but not too thick that when you mix it by hand it is tiring. If you add too much liquid in, you’ll have to add a whole lot more icing sugar to even it out.

Here’s what the second run looked like (using fondant hearts and colouring in the icing)

Dairy-Free Pink and Blue Dairy-Free Pink and Blue

Happy baking!

No Comments by Monnie on February 26, 2010
filed in Cupcakes, Recipes
tagged , ,

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Red Velvet Valentines

I finally figured it out to a standard I’m happy with. :)

When I made these cupcakes for the first time I used liquid food colouring. After that, I had the Wilton gel and used that for a few times. I was still getting the bright pinky colour and was scratching my head. Gel colouring is great for colouring fondant but not really in baking.

After a bit of research and the last post where I was voicing my concerns for the loss of the red cake, I have worked it out.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (makes 12 large or 18 mini)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup Self-Raising Flour
  • 115g unsalted butter (also known as roughly one stick of butter)
  • 1/3 cup Caster Sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon cocoa
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • cochineal and red liquid food colouring

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 175C (160C for fan forced). This is also the point where I remind you that having an oven thermometer is one of the greatest things you can do for your baking!
  2. Beat butter until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla and mix until all combined.
  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
  4. In a seperate cup, measure out the buttermilk and add cochineal and red food colouring until you have a bright red. Only add a little bit at a time to see the colour start to come through. Mix it through with a small whisk, as buttermilk is thicker than normal milk. (FYI, cochineal is a dark purpley-red colour, so you’ll want to add that first, mix, and follow with red).
  5. Sift flour and cocoa and add half into the mixture with half of your red buttermilk. You should get a red that’s not too fluroescent and not too light, thanks to the cocoa and cochineal colours. Add the other halves and mix until combined but don’t overmix.
  6. If you’re not happy with the colour here, add a little bit more red/cochineal colouring. Don’t add anymore cocoa to try and get it darker or it will go more of a brown than a red. For reference, I don’t use any more than a teaspoon of cochineal and a tablespoon of red.
  7. Spoon it into your baking cases and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Check at the 15 minute mark. If you leave them in too long, they will brown on the top and contrast with the red of the cake.

It always seems they’re not quite done when you poke a skewer in and it comes out clean, but the top springs back a lot. Believe in the skewer – and point it in on an angle if you’re unsure to double check. And don’t delay – they really do start turning brown quickly and you want them as spongy and red as you can get.

Leave them to cool completely before you store them anywhere or the cases will peel away from the cupcakes (due to humidity in cooling).

Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 225g Philadelphia cream cheese (cold)
  • 110g unsalted butter (close to room temperature, but not too melty)
  • 3-4 cups sifted pure icing sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon milk (only if really needed)
  1. Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and icing sugar one cup at a time. I say 3-4 cups because it depends on how the butter responds, especially what temperature it is at.
  2. When the sugar and butter are all combined and it’s a huge gluggy mess your mixer is having trouble with, throw in the cream cheese (chopped). It should mix through straight away.
  3. Mix until *just* combined and taste test – if it tastes like all the ingredients it’s done. If it tastes too cream cheese or butter mix some more until it’s all combined.

The key to this is not to overmix it – as much as you want to! You should have a nice thick sweet tasting frosting with that cream cheese kick. If it’s too thick to pipe, leave it for 3-4 minutes covered in cling wrap or add a tiny bit of milk. If you add too much it’ll go runny beyond repair so be veeery careful with adding liquids at the end.

As a little extra, the hearts in the picture are just white fondant, coloured with Wilton red gel colouring, and cut out with a tiny heart cutter I have for just that. I only use the 1M Wilton tip for piping as it’s the best icecream swirl there is.

I delivered a lot of orders for Cupcake Treats for this, as it was my Valentines special – and they are all amazingly perfect and taste delicious. I had some left over and my housemates loved them (so did all of my clients)!

2 Comments by Monnie on February 16, 2010
filed in Cupcakes, Recipes
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  • Cupcake Phenomenon!

    Hi! My name is Monnie and I live in Adelaide, Australia. Thanks for stopping by my cupcake blog! I love cupcakes because they bring people joy - so they make me happy in turn. I have got everyone hooked on making them and hopefully soon you will be too!

    My cupcakes have won first and second place at the 2009 Coonalpyn Show so you're looking at award winning cupcakes ;) I also sell them at Cupcake Treats, my business :)

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